SEO for Musicians: A Complete Guide Table of Contents Introduction 4 Chapter 1: Music SEO Strategy – The Fan Journey 6 Discovery 8 Exploration 10 Purchase 13 Retention 16 Advocacy 17 Chapter 1 Key Takeaway: Get To Know Your Fan Journey 18 Chapter 2: Find Your Band Keywords 19 A Basic Law of SEO: No Two Keywords Are Equal 20 The Most Important Keywords for Your Band 22 How To Research Your Band Keywords 23 Building Your Master Band Keyword List 26 Other Ways to Brainstorm Band Keywords 29 What To Do When You Get No Searches 30 What To Do When Your Band Name Isn’t Unique 31 Understanding The Long Tail Keywords 37 Chapter 2 Key Takeaway: Build Your Master Keyword List 40 Chapter 3: Get To Know Your SERPs 41 Your Band Name SERP 43 Your Tour Date SERPs 46 Your Album Name SERPs 49 Your Song Name SERPs 54 Chapter 3 Key Takeaway: Get To Know Your SERPs 56 Chapter 4: Optimize Your Band Website for SEO 57 Key Factors for Band Website SEO 57 Your Band Website as Your Hub 59 Linking Up the Hub 62 Optimizing Navigation & Indexation 64 Title Tags & Meta Descriptions 70 Content Pages for Keywords 73 SEO for Musicians: A Complete Guide Be Wise About Widgets 78 PR, Not Backlinks 80 Chapter 4 Key Takeaway: Optimize Your Band Website for SEO 83 Chapter 5: Get a Band Knowledge Panel 84 Establish Your Google Accounts 87 Create a Wikipedia Entry 92 Create a Wikidata.org Entry 93 Create a MusicBrainz Entry 95 Optimize Your Images 96 Chapter 5 Key Takeaway: Introduce Your Music to Google 100 Chapter 6: Optimize Your Band Schema for SEO 101 MusicGroup Schema Markup 104 MusicAlbum Schema Markup 107 Event Schema Markup 111 Chapter 6 Key Takeaway: Add Schema to Your Website 114 Chapter 7: Optimize Your Videos for SEO 115 Chapter 7 Key Takeaway: Optimize Your Videos for SEO 121 Chapter 8: Measuring Your SEO Results 122 Chapter 8 Key Takeaway: Track Your SEO Results 126 About Bandzoogle 127 SEO for Musicians: A Complete Guide 4 Introduction When we talk to other musicians about music marketing, SEO is a topic that comes up often. And why not? The good ‣ SEO is free! ‣ It’s known as a highly effective marketing channel for millions of businesses. ‣ It works! The not so good ‣ SEO is complex. ‣ It’s time consuming. ‣ It requires patience, since it tends to take a while to see results. SEO is known as a bit of a dark art. It’s not particularly easy to do well, and as a musician you just don’t have time to become an SEO rockstar. You have songs to write, tours to plan, rehearsals to organize. You don’t have time to become an SEO rockstar A lot of the SEO advice out there for musicians skims the surface: optimize your title tags, get backlinks, create content, and such. This is all relevant and useful advice, but we need to address the critical strategic aspect that makes SEO for musicians a little bit different than SEO for everyone else. SEO for Musicians: A Complete Guide 5 In this eBook we’ll cover the bigger picture - the abstract and conceptual. We’ll address the big question, which is: “How can SEO actually help me as a musician?” We’re going to give you an entire process. This is a question you need to have the answer to, in practical terms, before you start investing your time in your SEO. Just because certain SEO strategies work for millions of businesses, doesn’t necessarily mean they will work for musicians. Musicians need a unique SEO strategy with its own unique set of tactics. We’ll try to give you a complete SEO advice package, an entire process, to work with. The Bandzoogle Team bandzoogle.com facebook.com/Bandzoogle twitter.com/Bandzoogle instagram.com/Bandzoogle SEO for Musicians: A Complete Guide 6 Chapter 1: Music SEO Strategy – The Fan Journey It all starts with your fans. For artists, SEO is all about using search engines to help create a positive experience for your fans. As you build your fan base, your audience will move through some series of steps to eventually reach whatever goal they had in mind. Throughout those steps, they will have experiences online as they engage with your music and brand. SEO for artists is about creating a positive experience for your fans. Some of those experiences will involve search engines. So, what we need to do first is understand where search engines get involved. Wait…. don’t get bored!! Check it out. To help us visualize, let’s adapt a classic marketing framework, the customer journey, and apply it to the average music fan, as it relates to a typical band. We’ll call it the Fan Journey. We made a fun colourful graph for you (yay!). SEO for Musicians: A Complete Guide 7 The Fan Journey RADIO AND INTERNET PLAY MUSIC BLOG RECOMMENDATION INTERVIEWS ENGINES WORD OF MOUTH Discovery MEDIA music, videos, SOCIAL photos, blog, etc. MEDIA ALBUM REVIEWS TOUR DATES Exploration CONCERT TICKETS DOWNLOAD MUSIC SUBSCRIBE on Spotify, PHYSICAL Apple Music, etc. PRODUCT Purchase merch, viynl, etc. CONCERT TRACKING MAILING LIST AND BLOG ie: Bandsintown SOCIAL MEDIA ARTIST SUBSCRIBERS FOLLOWS ie: Bandcamp Retention SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENTS likes, shares, retweets, etc. CROWDFUNDING WORD OF MOUTH RECOMENDATIONS SHARING PLAYLISTS ON STREAMING SITES Advocacy SEO for Musicians: A Complete Guide 8 If you’re feeling ambitious, you might want to take some time to map out the Fan Journey for your band, taking into account your unique circumstances. So, now… "At what point do search engines come into play?" Take a second to stop and think about it... OK, let’s break it down by phase. RADIO AND INTERNET PLAY MUSIC BLOG RECOMMENDATION INTERVIEWS ENGINES WORD OF MOUTH Discovery Discovery In marketing, the first step is usually called “Awareness” and it’s where SEO does its magic for most businesses. Here's an example: say you want to build a website for your band, so you go to Google and type in “band websites”. There, you’ll find Bandzoogle. Now you’re aware of our company. And that’s very MEDIA importantmusic, to us. videos, SOCIAL photos, blog, etc. MEDIA ALBUM Nobody discovers new bandsREVIEWS by TOUR DATESsearchingExploration in Google. CONCERT TICKETS DOWNLOAD MUSIC SUBSCRIBE on Spotify, PHYSICAL Apple Music, etc. PRODUCT Purchase merch, viynl, etc. CONCERT TRACKING MAILING LIST AND BLOG ie: Bandsintown SOCIAL MEDIA ARTIST SUBSCRIBERS FOLLOWS ie: Bandcamp Retention SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENTS likes, shares, retweets, etc. CROWDFUNDING WORD OF MOUTH RECOMENDATIONS SHARING PLAYLISTS ON STREAMING SITES Advocacy SEO for Musicians: A Complete Guide 9 But, what if you’re a band that plays original music? How are search engines going to help you here? Well, they’re not. Nobody discovers new bands by searching on Google. Nobody types in “new band I’m going to love” and expects to actually find a new band they’re going to love. Nobody searches “indie band in toledo” to find new local music in Toledo. Ever played to an empty room? Yeah….. This is what an empty room looks like in SEO. No one searches for this keyword. Womp womp wommmmp. Not only would you go through a lot of pain trying to rank for a search term like that, you probably won’t manage to do it. And most importantly, that just isn’t how people discover music right now. For bands, the Discovery phase of the Fan Journey is probably the hardest - just getting your music in front of people who want to listen. Search engines are not likely to help you directly with this. RADIO AND INTERNET PLAY MUSIC BLOG RECOMMENDATION INTERVIEWS ENGINES WORD OF MOUTH Discovery SEO for Musicians: A Complete Guide 10 MEDIA music, videos, SOCIAL photos, blog, etc. MEDIA ALBUM REVIEWS TOUR DATES Exploration Exploration Exploration happens after a fan discovers you, likes what they hear, and wants to hear or learn more. This is where search engines start to really matter for most bands. Ask yourself: “What will most people do after they hear my song, and they really love it, but they don’t know my band yet?” CONCERT They’ll probably wantTICKETS to know what you look like, where you come DOWNLOAD from, what other people think of you, what your other music soundsMUSIC SUBSCRIBE like, whereon Spotify, you’re playing next, etc. PHYSICAL Apple Music, etc. PRODUCT Purchase merch, viynl, etc. There’s probably a good chance they’ll Google your band name. One of the first things they might do is Google your band name... Or maybe the song name…. Or maybe some lyrics that got stuck in their head…. Let’s say youCONCERT just discovered TRACKING this awesome song you’veMAILING never LIST heard by AND BLOG ie: Bandsintown SOCIAL MEDIA ARTIST SUBSCRIBERSElephant Stone. You search their name and…. ding!!! FOLLOWS ie: Bandcamp Retention SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENTS likes, shares, retweets, etc. CROWDFUNDING WORD OF MOUTH RECOMENDATIONS SHARING PLAYLISTS ON STREAMING SITES Advocacy SEO for Musicians: A Complete Guide 11 A typical-looking Google search result for an established band. Awesome, so much great stuff!! So this is where SEO first comes into play for you, in a big way. It’s your opportunity to show your new fans everything you’ve got. You want to make sure that when they search for your band or music, you’ve got a really pro selection of content for them to check out. Your audience, at this stage of the Fan Journey, are really potential fans who want to get to know you.